


Climb Over The Parallel Lines

by sleepydanceur



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Blood and Violence, Doctor!Jongin, Hitman!Kyungsoo, M/M, Romance, brief mention of noncon activities in passing by OCs/criminals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 16:34:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7721941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepydanceur/pseuds/sleepydanceur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ksoo!Assassin/Jongin!Doctor - Jongin's smile is so warm. Kyungsoo wonders if his smile would still stay if he knew what Kyungsoo does to land himself here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Climb Over The Parallel Lines

**Author's Note:**

> My fic for the kaisooaufest! (No One Dies This Time)
> 
> A million thank you's to Emily, always, for helping me with it ;u; 
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy it! ;v;

Kyungsoo steadies his breathing, pressing himself against the wall with his finger squeezing closer to the trigger of his gun. It’s dark, enough that he can hide in the shadows without being spotted easily from the spot he’s picked to lie in wait. Three more minutes. 

Right on cue, the sound of the hinges squeaking reaches his ears and the front door swings open, the metal grating as it slams shut again. There are footsteps, heavy from the thick boots against the floor. Kyungsoo times it, waiting until they’re just close enough to where he’s standing before swinging out from behind the wall and taking aim. He fires the shot but the man is too fast for him, reacting quickly and ducking out of the way before the bullet blows his brains out. He recovers quickly, pulling his own gun out from the holster strapped to his ankle, bringing it up to fire a shot back. Kyungsoo dodges it, barrelling forward to elbow the man in the face, making a grab at the gun in his hand. The man struggles, trying to gain control but Kyungsoo snaps his wrist hard into the knee he brings slamming up, snapping the gun out of his hand. The gun skids away but he loses his own gun in the process, earning himself a punch to the gut when the man recovers from the knock in his nose. Close combat then. 

Kyungsoo raises his fists in front of his face, ready to take him on but the man reaches into the back of his belt and pulls out a switchblade, flicking it open in front of his face. He moves quickly, lunging forward and slashes the air in front of Kyungsoo, just missing his face by a few inches. He tries again and Kyungsoo arches away, holding the armed hand off with a skillful sharp jab to the man’s elbow, locking his arm up momentarily. Undeterred, the man brings his other arm swinging around, his fist aiming for his skull and Kyungsoo can’t move away in time without impaling himself on the knife. The impact of the blow sends him reeling, gasping as the pain explodes behind his eyes. He staggers off balance, unable to stop the knee that smashes straight into his gut, doubling him over. Somehow, he manages to pull it together quickly enough to roll out of the way when the knife comes swinging down, aiming for his spine. Straightening up, Kyungsoo pulls in lungfuls of air before leaping backwards again to avoid another swing of the knife. He’s being backed into the wall but he sees the glint of the giant glass window and he beelines towards it, the man hot on his heels. Kyungsoo doesn’t bother with covering his hand up, smashing his fist right into the glass to shatter it into pieces. The impact shoots a sharp sting of pain zinging up his hand, bleeding from the glass shards but he pushes it aside, picking up the largest broken shard he can find on the ground. 

Smirking, the man pushes forward again, starting with a kick that Kyungsoo deflects before bringing the knife back forward, trying to disembowel him. He manages to slice through Kyungsoo’s arm instead, hot white pain burning in his skin as the blade cuts his bicep open, feeling the warm trickle of blood streaming down his arm. Grunting, he switches hands with the shard of glass, cracking his neck grumpily. This got a whole lot messier than it needed to be.

He deflects another swing of the knife coming at his face, latching onto the man’s wrist this time and twisting it around as hard as he can. The sound of breaking bones is indication enough that it’s broken, coupled with the man’s cry of pain. He uses the broken wrist to force him down, squeezing down hard enough to make him drop the knife, hearing the blade clack onto the ground. The man tries for another blow in the gut but Kyungsoo’s had enough, bringing the shard of glass down and plunging it right into the side of the man’s neck, severing his jugular in one swift movement. The man finally stops, going limp as he chokes on his own blood, bleeding out from his neck. Kyungsoo braces a boot on the man’s chest and kicks him back roughly, sending him sprawling to bleed out on the ground instead of on him. The man’s breathing rasps a while longer until it finally stops and his body stills lifelessly. 

Heaving out a huge sigh, Kyungsoo straightens up, groaning when he feels bones shifting uncomfortably under his skin, sending a twinge of pain in his chest. Fractured rib, maybe. He’ll have to get that checked out. His hand is busted too, cut open with bits of glass still embedded in his skin from the broken window. He leaves it be for the moment, struggling to pull the burner phone out from his back pocket, dialling a number he’s memorized by heart.

“It’s done,” he says shortly when the other end picks up. The call ends seconds later without a word but Kyungsoo knows they’ve gotten the message. They pay him in cash, so Kyungsoo will need to pick it up himself later.

He turns back to where the body of the man is crumpled, staring down at him coldly. Yang Hyunjun, 35 years old, CEO of a major oil company. It doesn’t matter why the government wanted him dead, always after their own political agenda. Kyungsoo’s read his file, all of it. That includes the multiple counts of rape charges made against him that were dropped after a sizeable bribe to the judge. His secretary, a hotel maid and even his own sister. That’s why Kyungsoo took the job. It’s part of the deal he’d struck with the government after being approached by them first. They give him information and enough to pay the bills and get by, and he helps get rid of specific targets. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship that suits both of them. It’s all off the books, of course. Kyungsoo doesn’t keep most of the money anyway, finding a better use for it by anonymously giving it to the string of victims who’ve suffered at the hands of the criminals Kyungsoo takes down..

He steps over the body, not bothering to clean the place up. They’ll send their own people to clear the place up, like they always do. Kyungsoo never asks what they do with the bodies and he doesn’t really care anyhow, preferring not to make it his business to know. Kyungsoo considers going back home, suddenly exhausted, but he’s still bleeding badly from his hand and bicep, and he’d rather get his ribs checked out before he wakes up with a punctured lung or something. The hospital is only a few miles from here.

He finds a bathroom around back before he leaves, letting the water flow freely from the tap as he tries to wash the blood and grime off his face to at least make himself more presentable to the public. Kyungsoo splashes some more water onto his face, relishing the cool feeling calming him down. He stares at his reflection in the dirty, cracked mirror on the wall, noting numbly how dead his eyes look. There’s a coldness to them, one he never used to see in his eyes until he went too far into this line of work, getting in too deep until he’d passed the point of no return, unable to come back from everything. His mind spins, running wild with memories again before he can stop them. The flashes of dripping blood fill his head up again, agonizing memories like a noose around his throat, always coming back to rush before his eyes before he can even stop them or ward them off. The crimson surges, filling his vision and Kyungsoo smashes his fist into the mirror, shattering his reflection away. The memories finally stop.

He stares down at his bloody fist, waiting for the shaking to stop. Kyungsoo wraps it up in a rag loosely, leaving the building through the back door where he’d left his motor bike, leaning against the wall of the alley. The pain flares up again when he curls his hand around the handlebars, hissing at the painful pull of his skin around the open wounds. Revving the engine up, he doesn’t spare another look over his shoulder before pulling out into the street driving away from the building.

 

It's late out, nearing the later hours of the evening but the hospital is still bustling with activity, the emergency doors bursting open again and again as more gurneys and people come through them, needing immediate assistance. Kyungsoo steps inside quietly, staying out of the doctors' way to let them tend to the more urgent patients filtering in. He goes to the reception instead, calmly explaining what kind of treatment he needs and gets sent over to one of the gurneys separated by thin curtains to wait until someone comes by on their rounds to tend to him.

It's always noisy in here. Kyungsoo closes his eyes and lets the sounds wash over him. He's been here his fair share of times after a messy job like this one, familiar enough with the place that it doesn't feel foreign to him. He's never been one for hospitals, preferring to avoid them but there's something about the constant stream of noise, that there's never a moment of stillness or silence, that reels him back in without avoiding it. It sits comfortably in his gut, chasing away the initial aversion to the smell of the bleach and antiseptic.

The moment is cut short when the curtain around him rips open and a familiar face pops around with a chart in his hands.

"Mr. Do? Already back so soon?"

The doctor, Jongin, closes the curtain back around them, offering Kyungsoo a smile.

"You come here so often you might as well just book a private room for yourself," Jongin teases, putting the chart down and coaxing Kyungsoo to lift his arms up straight in front of him. He pulls out his flashlight from his coat breast pocket, flashing it in Kyungsoo's eyes but rules out a concussion, which Kyungsoo is relieved to hear.

"Did you fall off your bike again?"

Jongin's smile is so warm. Kyungsoo wonders if his smile would still stay if he knew what Kyungsoo does to land himself here.

"Yeah," he says, looking away from Jongin's eyes, staring down at a spot behind him instead, studying the gaudy flowers on the curtain. "Maybe I should think about getting a car."

Jongin laughs, pulling a chair over to sit down, leveling with Kyungsoo's hand where it's still a bleeding mess. He's gentle when he holds Kyungsoo's hand steady to pull the broken pieces of glass out, discarding the bloody pieces in a metal tray. The antiseptic burns but Kyungsoo reins it in, biting down hard on his lip. Jongin makes quick work of it, patching up the open wounds neatly before winding a roll of gauze around his hand neatly. He spots the gash on his bicep under the ripped flaps of his shirt and turns to tend to it the same way.

"Not that I don't enjoy your company," Jongin starts quietly, patting his bound arm gently before Kyungsoo pulls it back onto his own knee. "But take care of yourself, okay?"

His eyes are wide and honest, that sincerity of his burning through like fire. He's concerned, but then he's a doctor; it's in his nature to be concerned about his health. It feels almost misplaced all things considered. Kyungsoo doesn't say anything, silent as he stares down at the clean gauze around his hand.

Jongin strips his bloodied gloves off, tossing them in the bin before checking over the rest of Kyungsoo’s body, pressing his fingers into his ribs and Kyungsoo can't hold back the way he winces this time.

"Well, they’re not broken," Jongin says finally and Kyungsoo drops his shirt back down. Jongin's eyes still catch on the patchwork of scars around his entire body, lingering like he can't help himself, even after having seen them a number of times before during Kyungsoo's previous visits here. "That's going to be a nasty bruise though so you'll need to ice it and get lots of rest."

He stresses the last bit sternly and Kyungsoo manages a smile at the imploring look on Jongin's face. He knows he's a stubborn patient.

"I'll write you a prescription for some pain meds and then you're free to go, Mr. Do," Jongin says, turning to get his prescription pad out and Kyungsoo slides off the stretched bed, slipping back into his jacket. Kyungsoo takes the prescription, nodding gratefully as he tucks it into his pocket.

"Thanks," Kyungsoo says, pulling his keys out from his pocket. Jongin looks down at them reproachfully.

"I could call you a cab, you really shouldn't be driving on a damaged bike-"

"I'll be fine, doc," Kyungsoo says, managing another smile at the concern. It's out of place but nice to hear directed at him all the same.

"Jongin. Just call me Jongin."

"Jongin." Kyungsoo looks up at him, watching the hint of an exasperated smile tugging at the corner of Jongin's mouth.

"I guess...I hope I don't see you around, then?" Jongin jokes, waving a hand at the bloody glass behind him and the hospital bed.

Kyungsoo offers a small smile, pushing the curtains aside and throws a short wave over his shoulder in thanks before walking out, heading back out into the night chill where he'd left his bike. It's a little tricky working the handlebar and breaks with his hand bound up like this but he manages, having had far worse before.

He's tired when he finally gets back to his small apartment, pushing the wobbly door open to step inside. He slips his jacket off with a grunt, feeling his chest ache as he throws it aside and slumps down on his bed, not bothering to go and shower. 

He closes his eyes. It's cold in here, always so cold no matter what he covers himself up with or how high he turns up the weak, faulty heater in here. Kyungsoo exhales through his nose and lets the thick, heavy silence settle over him again, cold and vacant as ever, weighing down on his chest and lulling him into a restless sleep.

▸

Working on commission means Kyungsoo has plenty of free time to spare during the day with nothing much to do. His apartment is the size of a shoebox so cleaning up the place barely takes him an hour. It's enough to work up an appetite though and Kyungsoo sighs when he opens the fridge door, eyeing the lone carton of milk and half empty packet of ham left on the bare shelves.

The grocery store is only a few blocks away from his place, and Kyungsoo tugs his cap down lower over his eyes, keeping his hands tucked into his pockets as he makes his way across the street. It's still early on a Saturday morning, so the streets are empty for the most part other than a handful of early risers like him. The store is bustling with a lot more people and Kyungsoo slips through the throng of people, grabbing things off the shelves deftly and sliding past the crowd unnoticed.

He stops by the freezer, eyeing the buckets of ice cream. It's been getting hotter lately and he hasn't indulged himself with something sugary in a while. His eyes skim over the labels till he finds the cookie crumble one he's fond of, the last one left in the freezer. Leaning over the edge, he reaches out for it at the same time that someone else's hand reaches over for it too, bumping into his.

"Oh, sorry- Kyungsoo?"

Startled, Kyungsoo retracts his hand, instinctively shrinking back on high alert into a defensive stance. It's a voice he recognizes though, and Kyungsoo looks up to see Jongin there, blinking at him.

"Doc- Jongin," Kyungsoo amends, relaxing his muscles and breathing properly again. "Hi."

"You like the cookie crumble too, huh?" Jongin smiles, picking up the tub and setting it down in Kyungsoo's carrier bag.

"I don't usually see you around here," Kyungsoo comments, surprised. The hospital is a good distance away from here though he has no idea where Jongin lives.

"Yeah, well," Jongin scratches the back of his neck sheepishly, offering an embarrassed smile. "The stores on my side of town don't really have much ice cream flavours to choose from, this place has the best ones."

Kyungsoo stares at him pensively for a moment before hauling the ice cream tub out of his basket and pushing into Jongin's hands.

"I can do chocolate too," he says simply, picking one out from the freezer, refusing to take the cookie crumble back when Jongin tries.

"Thanks," Jongin concedes eventually, looking a little flushed. "So, you live in this area then? It's pretty nice."

He falls into step with Kyungsoo as they make their way out of the freezer aisle, over to the canned goods.

"It's alright," Kyungsoo says, reaching for a can of tuna. He notices the printed T-shirt Jongin's wearing, and his tight, fitted jeans. It's strange seeing him out of his scrubs and white coat for the first time.

"I've finally got a day off from the hospital," Jongin beams, realizing what he's thinking.

"Any big plans?" Kyungsoo asks.

"Uh, well," Jongin looks down at the ice cream tub in his hands. "This, really. And sleeping. Lots of sleeping."

Kyungsoo manages a smile, chuckling under his breath. He ducks over to the next aisle, scooping up a handful of popcorn packs and balances them on the lid of Jongin's ice cream.

"Might as well go all out," he says, pleased when Jongin laughs. They get in line to pay for their things and Jongin goes first, bagging up his ice cream and popcorn after paying.

He steps aside and waits patiently for Kyungsoo while he pays for his things, smiling again when he's done. He smiles a lot, Kyungsoo notes, keeping his eyes firmly down. It's nice.

"I should get going, then," Jongin says, jabbing a finger over his shoulder, in the opposite direction of where Kyungsoo lives. "It was nice seeing you not bloodied and bruised for a change."

He means it lightly, with a humorous tone and Kyungsoo works a smile on his face through the sharp pang it sends in his chest.

"Enjoy the ice cream," he says, waving one last time as they go their separate ways. He stops himself from turning back to look at Jongin's retreating figure.

His apartment is as still and silent as his left it, somehow feeling more hollow than it usually does when he steps inside, out of the bright sunlight. He puts everything in the fridge, wondering if 9am is too early for ice cream. He's suddenly craving it.

A high pitched meow catches his attention and Kyungsoo turns to the fire escape, spotting the grey tipped ears of the stray cat that visits his balcony every now and then.

Working open the tuna can he'd just bought, Kyungsoo shovels some onto a small plate and takes it out onto the balcony, sitting back on his haunches as he watches the cat nibble at the food. It doesn't flinch when Kyungsoo reaches out tentatively to scratch its head, pleased with the attention, or at least distracted enough by the food to not be bothered. The cat licks the plate clean in seconds and leans into Kyungsoo's hand, purring and meowing needily. It sniffs at Kyungsoo's fingers, turning back to sniff at the empty plate, clearly realizing that there's no more food left. The cat turns and leaps off the fire escape in one swift movement, landing on the high brick wall enclosing a small field below.

Sighing, Kyungsoo watches it go, disappearing behind the wall in seconds, leaving him with nothing but the empty plate to take back into his empty apartment.

▸

Kyungsoo slides into one of the corner booths in the cafe, a different one this time, as usual. The waitress comes to his table to pour him some coffee and Kyungsoo cups the mug in his hands, letting the heat seep into his palms. He's meeting his contact here for his next assignment.

Kyungsoo stares down at the swirling coffee, still too hot to drink, lost in thought. He picks at the raised skin running along the back of his hand, a scar he got years ago, back when he was still in the special forces. It’s been months since he quit, having handed in his badge shortly after his brother died.

He remembers it vividly, replaying the scene over and over in his head, when he’s awake and in his dreams. Kyungsoo had watched as Seungsoo waved at him from across the street, on his way to have lunch with him, not even noticing the hooded figure standing behind him till he’d pulled out a gun and shot Seungsoo in the back. 

There was so much blood pooling around him on the ground, drenching Kyungsoo’s clothes when he finally got to him, holding him in his arms as Seungsoo choked on his own blood. He was gone in seconds, and Kyungsoo could see the life leaving his eyes. 

He remembers standing in court, watching in disbelief as his brother’s killer stood there in an expensive suit and the best lawyer money could buy, smiling when he was given a sentence of 6 months for lack of evidence. The gun had been wiped clean of prints and the cctv cameras in the area were somehow disabled at the time. There was no evidence. Kyungsoo called their bullshit, accusing them of manipulatin the evidence. He was certain this was a planned, organized hit and the last thing he saw before getting dragged out of the courtroom was the killer’s smug face that only confirmed it. It seemed unreal to think that someone would want to kill Seungsoo, a simple government worker, yet everything seemed to point to that.

By the time the killer was released, he’d already disappeared off the grid, heading underground, into hiding. Kyungsoo tried everything and used every resource he could get his hands on, chasing every lead he could find but kept hitting a dead end. His supervisor wouldn’t listen, telling him to let the case go, that there was nothing else they could do now and cut off his resources, revoking his authorization to look into the case.

Furious, Kyungsoo quit the force, angered by the limits of the law and justice, restricted to a point where bad people would be allowed to get away with their crimes like it was nothing. He couldn’t be a part of that anymore. 

Kyungsoo was approached some time later by a man called Chuwon, saying he worked for a different sector in the government that sympathized with him and his loss. Chuwon asked him if he wanted the chance to really make a difference, to deal the real kind of justice he was seeking. He offered him a deal; he would help him find out who ordered the kill on his brother with his resources if Kyungsoo helped them with some favours, off the book, in return. 

Kyungsoo refused the moment Chuwon told him what he’d be doing until he described the kind of targets he’d be getting; corrupt businessmen, untouchable by the law with enough money to buy their way out of anything. 

It took some more persuading and a lot more time to think over engaging in something so questionable before Kyungsoo said yes. He thought about Seungsoo, and the unfairness of how he’d died and been put to rest in a grave without the justice he deserved. Kyungsoo agreed to it. He gave them his terms, only agreeing to work for them as long as the targets had that specific profile.

They’ve stayed true to their word, in turn, hunting down leads and giving Kyungsoo more information about what they’ve found ever since then, though it hasn’t been much. It was an organized hit and and they got their hands on the full background of Seungsoo’s killer and what organizations he was involved in, including a number of gangs working hand in hand with white collar conglomerates. They’ve been giving him information in bits and pieces as they go since he took up the first job. 

Kyungsoo hears the bells jingle somewhere behind him when someone pushes the door open and he snaps out of the memories, glancing down at his watch; punctual as always. He can hear someone sliding into the booth behind him, settling in the seat that’s back to back with his. The cafe is fairly empty this time of the evening, helping them blend in more inconspicuously. Kyungsoo anticipates the rustling sound of a brown enveloped being slid over to him through the gap between the windowsill and the booth, as Kyungsoo had strategically picked it out. He grabs the envelope and takes a sip from his coffee nonchalantly.

“We’ve got another lead. A big one” Chuwon murmurs and Kyungsoo perks up at the sound that they might finally have gotten their hands on new, decent information. “For a price.”

"Three days," Chuwon murmurs as Kyungsoo opens the envelope. “We need you to get rid of him.” 

The burner phone slides out first and he pockets it before pulling out the thin stack of papers and photos. His heart stops.

"This-"

He stares at the photo of the next target they're asking him to take down. It's Jongin. Kyungsoo balks, gaping at the rest of the photos, tailing Jongin as he goes in and out of the hospital, even one of his coming out of his house. 

"I- what do you need with a doctor? What did he do?” Kyungsoo manages in a tight voice, staring at Jongin's face, caught with a smile in one of the snapshots.

"We need to keep him quiet. He's been meddling in things he shouldn't be." Chuwon’s tone changes, lilting with suspicion and Kyungsoo catches himself, realizing how out of character this outburst is when he's never asked questions before. Still, he can't help it.

“This wasn't part of the deal,” he grits out. “I said I’d only go after criminals.”

"You need this information about your brother don’t you? What we’s got is key,” Chuwon says. “Is this going to be a problem?"

Kyungsoo swallows and pushes the pictures back inside the envelope, smoothing out his expression though his hands are fisted on the table in front of him. The memory of his brother’s face floats up into his mind again, before his eyes.

"No."

He stays seated in the booth long after Chuwon has already left, after his coffee has already gone stone cold.

▸

None of it adds up. Jongin is a _good_ person, there’s no way he’s anything like the people Kyungsoo has been tasked to take out before. With the others, he’d seen it with his own eyes, keeping his targets under close surveillance before taking them out strategically. He could see then, the kind of people that they were.

With Jongin though; Kyungsoo has spoken to him countless times, even met him outside his workplace and he’s close to the epitome of what a decent person would be. It’s hard to believe he could possible have some level of darkness buried and hidden within him underneath this person Kyungsoo knows. He’s friendly and kind, he’s warm and Kyungsoo can’t even think about killing him. He can’t do it. 

Their initial agreement was that he would be given tasks to terminate people who are scum, ones that deserve it. This time though, Jongin is the one target that doesn’t deserve it. There isn’t even a back record of any convictions or offences in Jongin’s name in his file. Chuwon just pushed all the right buttons and said all the right words to make him take this up, baiting him with his brother’s case.

His three days are up before he knows it, having spent too much time thinking it over and he’s out of time but he still can’t do it. This is wrong. 

The burner phone he’d gotten from Chuwon starts to ring and Kyungsoo swallows tightly, letting it ring on a little too long before answering the call. 

“You’re late.”

“I need more time,” Kyungsoo says, desperately. He needs to find a way around this, he needs a plan. One that doesn’t end up with Jongin dying.

“You’ve never needed more time.” 

“Just give me-”

“If you’re not up to the job we’ll send someone else.”

“Wai-”

The call ends before he can say anything else. 

_Shit_. Kyungsoo clenches the phone in his hand, pressing it to his forehead as he leans his elbows on his knees. He has to do something; he needs to make a move before the other person they’re sending gets there. Kyungsoo spares a moment to think about the important lead they would have given him on Seungsoo’s case if he’d finished this job, and he grits his teeth, pushing it out of his mind. 

Tossing the phone aside, Kyungsoo yanks his jacket on and tucks his gun into his belt, hiding it behind the flap of his jacket before heading out of his apartment. He prays that his bike is fast enough to get to the hospital before anyone else does.

The sun has already set by the time Kyungsoo gets there, turning off the engine and hopping off to dart into the hospital from the back entrance. He glances at his watch seeing how late it is. It’s just about the time when Jongin usually gets off work from a late shift. 

Kyungsoo passes by the reception area and just catches the tail end of a murmured conversation.

“Dr. Kim? His shift is over. You might find him in the locker rooms, just take the elevator, one floor up.”

He glances at the man asking, donning a white lab coat and a stethoscope around his neck but Kyungsoo can see the fake lenses of his glasses and the discreet bulge of a gun around his hip.

Kyungsoo backs away silently and takes another route, trying to find a quicker way to the locker rooms. He ducks into the fire escape stairs, taking them three by three as he goes up to the next floor

The corridors are much more quiet up here in the middle of the staff rooms and Kyungsoo treads carefully, keeping a hand drawn back to his hip to reach for his gun if he has to. 

He can see a light up ahead, shining out through an open door and Kyungsoo quickens his pace.

“-can I help you?”

Jongin’s voice floats out and Kyungsoo tears into the room desperately, just in time to see Jongin’s eyes widen at the gun being pointed to his face. 

“Get down!” Kyungsoo barks, aiming a sharp, calculated kick into the back of the man’s knees and yanks his wrist upwards. The gun fires out a shot and the bullet embeds itself in the ceiling. Luckily, there’s a silencer attached to the nozzle, muting the sound almost entirely to avoid attracting attention. Jongin ducks behind one of the lockers, looking terrified as he shields his head with his hands. 

The man smashes his elbow back into Kyungsoo’s gut, doubling him over but Kyungsoo keeps holding onto his wrist, swinging him around, away from Jongin. He manages to reach back and pull out his gun but the man reacts quickly, turning and and smashing it out of his hand. It skids across the floor, sliding under the lockers. 

Grunting, Kyungsoo swings his fist back up to get a good blow on the man’s face, throwing him off enough to twist his wrist around and smash the gun out of his hand. It skids far out of reach, under a cabinet by the wall. 

The man fights Kyungsoo off and lunges for it. Kyungsoo is too far away from his own gun to even consider making a grab for it. Instead, he dashes over to where Jongin is trying to make himself as small as possible, yanking him up and dragging him out of the room before the man has managed to retrieve his gun. 

“Which is the fastest way out?” Kyungsoo asks, sprinting down the corridor with Jongin in tow, holding on to his wrist. 

“What the hell is going on, why are you h-”

“Jongin!”

Jongin skids to a stop, taking a right into one of the branching corridors. 

“There’s a back door leading down to the car park from here,” he pants, heaving the door open. He looks pale and scared but he’s pushing forward and that’s the best that Kyungsoo can ask for right now. 

They take the stairs and Jongin nearly stumbles and falls before getting his balance back, staggering over to push through the door at the bottom of the staircase. They come out into the dark car park outside, dimly lit by the streetlights. 

“This way,” Kyungsoo says, leading them up the road to get around to where he left his bike. 

He hears the door smashing open again behind them, and yanks Jongin down behind a car just before a bullet whistles through the air, smashing into the windshield instead. 

“What do we do?” Jongin wheezes frantically, raising a shaky hand to brush his sweaty hair out of his eyes. Gritting his teeth, Kyungsoo looks around, trying to find the best route to get out of here without a bullet in their skulls. 

He can hear the man approaching, his shadow looming in closer to where they are. Another bullet ricochets off the side of the car, closer to where they’re hiding and Kyungsoo acts quickly, grabbing a rock off the ground from the crumbling pavement. 

“On three, run that way up the road, around the corner,” Kyungsoo instructs quickly, and Jongin nods, too scared for his life to question him. They’re only a few steps away from the wall around the building. 

“One, two,” Kyungsoo says under his breath, gearing himself up to run. “Three!”

He lunges in the opposite direction than Jongin, smashing the rock into the windshield of the next car over, completely shattering the glass. The shrill car alarm pierces through the air and it works well enough as a distraction when the man fires another bullet in the direction of the sound, giving Jongin enough time to dart around the corner. Kyungsoo slides over the hood of the car onto the other side, taking the man by surprise enough to kick him down, off balance. He seizes the chance to run, heading for cover before the man recovers. Kyungsoo has almost made it before suddenly feeling a sharp pain in his side, hissing just as he ducks around the corner. He pushes on, catching up to where he can see Jongin still running. 

“Over here!” he calls, leading the way to his bike and hurriedly yanks his keys out to get the engine going the second he gets on. Jongin wastes no time, climbing onto the bike behind him and holds on tightly to his jacket. 

Kyungsoo can see the man coming around the corner, already raising the gun to shoot again and he pulls out of the lot, backing out onto the street and revs the engine up to full speed, immediately driving away. 

“Where are we going?” Jongin asks loudly, trying to be heard over the wind at the speed they’re going. He clutches at Kyungsoo’s waist more tightly in an effort not to fall off and Kyungsoo swallows down his groan when a spike of pain shoots up his side. 

“A safe house,” he says in reply, getting them off the mainroad to take down the darker, quieter side streets instead. “We need to lie low before they send more.”

It’s a good distance away from the hospital, in the opposite direction of his own apartment and hopefully far away enough from Jongin’s place too. It’s a long ride and Kyungsoo puts on an extra burst of speed, wary that they might be getting tailed and also starting to feel dizzy from the pain flaring up. 

He pulls up in a small side alley, driving the bike up into a small garage before shutting the engine off. Pulling out the key, he pushes the door to the apartment open and ushers Jongin inside, locking the door behind him and bolting it shut. 

He reaches up to flick the lights on and the movement sends a wave of dizziness and pain washing over him, making his knees buckle. He crumples, nearly hitting the ground before Jongin catches him, quick to react. 

“You’re bleeding!” Jongin exclaims, holding his hand up shining with Kyungsoo’s blood.

“Didn’t run fast enough,” Kyungsoo grunts as Jongin drags him over to the couch to lay him down gently. He pulls Kyungsoo’s shirt up slowly, shucking it up away from the wound before inspecting it, lifting him up a few inches to check behind his waist. 

“Clean shot,” he says, laying Kyungsoo back down. “The bullet went right through.”

He grabs Kyungsoo’s hand and flattens it over the wound, staunching the blood flow. 

“You need to put pressure on it,” Jongin instructs him, striding over into the kitchen. “Do you have a first aid kit?”

“Bathroom cabinet.”

If he had the energy to spare, Kyungsoo would have to chuckle at the irony of how the tables have turned. 

Jongin rushes back to his side, dropping down on his knees, his hands full with the medkit, a bowl of water and towels. He gets to work, pushing Kyungsoo’s hand aside to start cleaning the wound and patching him up. His brows are furrowed in concentration, pulling tools out of the medkit and threading the needle. 

“What the hell is going on?” Jongin asks finally, entirely focused on what he’s doing but he can’t stop the quaver in his voice. “Why are people trying to _kill_ me?”

“You tell me,” Kyungsoo says, eyeing him. “Why would someone want to kill a doctor?”

Jongin bites his lip, staying silent though Kyungsoo fills that silence with a groan of pain when Jongin cleans up the wound with disinfectant. 

“How did you know?” Jongin says quietly, focusing on closing up the wound. 

Kyungsoo looks at him. “Know what?”

Jongin finally looks up and he looks wary and confused. “That I would be there. That someone else would be there to try and kill me.”

He knew that was coming at some point. Jongin looks afraid even if the confidence is clear in the way his hands move with practiced ease, twisting the needle and thread in and out. He thinks about the way Jongin usually looks at him and talks to him, warm and friendly and wonders how his eyes will change when he hears the truth. 

He could lie to him, make up some story to cover it up. He’s no stranger to lying when he lives one everyday. Except there’s a heavy loneliness in lying and Kyungsoo finds it harder to even think about lying to Jongin to his face too. 

“Because I was supposed to be the one who killed you.”

Jongin’s hands freeze mid stitch and Kyungsoo holds his breath, resigned for the worst. He swallows visibly and his fingers start to tremble a bit around the needle.

“Jongin-”

“Don’t,” Jongin cuts in, squeezing his eyes shut. “Don’t- just- give me a second I-”

He struggles, shaking his head and swallows again. 

“Why didn’t you?” he asks finally, looking up at Kyungsoo with a mixture of fear and confusion in his eyes.

Kyungsoo presses his lips together, wondering where to even begin with answering that question.

“It’s complicated.”

Jongin frowns, still shaking and Kyungsoo feels his heart sink at what he’s shattered. The wound is still half open and Kyungsoo wonders if Jongin is going to leave him like that and make a break for it. 

Instead, Jongin turns back to the wound and keeps on stitching it in silence, cleaning it up when he’s done and carefully smooths down a patch of gauze over it. 

He sits back when he’s done, wiping his hands off with the wet rag. 

“Now we’re even.”

He stands up and walks away without a word. He seems to realize that he can’t leave just yet, recognizing the gravity and danger of the situation he’s in. He turns and disappears into one of the bedrooms, closing the door behind him. Kyungsoo hears the lock turn and click into place. 

He sighs, pressing his fingers into his eyes, trying to rub out the headache. The pain in his side spikes up sharply, throbbing more achingly now that he’s actually letting his guard down and registering it properly. He wants to get up but just can’t find the strength for it. He thinks about what a mess everything is, but he doesn’t regret what he’s done for a single second. Jongin’s alive; that’s all that matters. He lies there until he passes out from the pain and exhaustion. 

 

When Kyungsoo wakes up again, his tongue feels like cotton and every fibre in his body aches. He groans in pain, clutching at his side when it sears agonizingly as though he’s being shot all over again. He tries to sit up but still can’t quite manage it. Instead, he notices a couple of painkillers and a glass of water sitting on the coffee table. Jongin must have put them out there while he was passed out. Everything hurts and Kyungsoo sighs, feeling a pool of regret and guilt building in the pit of his stomach, still grateful that Jongin even thought to do that for him after what he told him.

Drinking the water thirstily, he swallows down the pills, urging them to kick in quickly. He lies there a while longer before trying to get up again, grunting at the effort and beads of sweat starts forming on his forehead at the sharp stabs of pain. He manages to push himself upright, gripping the side of the couch tightly and shuffles his way to the kitchen. He leans over the sink with difficulty, trying to splash some water on his face, feeling rather grimy and dirty with his entire front still covered in blood.The movement is still too much for him, shooting a spell of dizziness through him when he straightens back up, feeling another spike of pain zinging up his side and his knees go weak. 

“You shouldn’t be up- woah!” Jongin’s voice comes up behind him just as Kyungsoo feels his legs give out. Jongin catches him, steadying him and helping him into one of the kitchen chairs and Kyungsoo breathes heavily. Jongin suddenly looks out of place, shifting like he doesn’t know what to do with himself and sits at the other end of the table instead. 

He looks like he has a lot to say. Kyungsoo braces himself for it, waiting for anything, for Jongin’s anger, his disgust, his coldness. 

“You didn’t answer my question yesterday,” Jongin says instead, folding his arms on the edge of the table. 

“I said it was complicated,” Kyungsoo says again. 

“That’s not good enough,” Jongin frowns. “I need to know why. I need to know who you are, what you do. Why you do it.”

Kyungsoo sighs, gripping the edge of the table tightly. There’s really not much more damage he could do by just telling him everything, after last night. He pauses, trying to find a place to start and swallows when Seungsoo’s face appears first in his mind, the reason he went down this road in the first place. 

Kyungsoo decides to start from there, watching Jongin’s face closely at his words, seeing the initial sympathy there through his confliction. He tells him everything without trying to sugarcoat it when there’s nothing he could hide at this point anyway. Jongin’s expression twists when Kyungsoo tells him about his targets, sparing him those details at least though Jongin gets the gist by now, having seen him at it first hand. 

“So every time you came to the hospital covered in cuts and broken bones,” Jongin says breathlessly, as the realization hits. He looks stunned. “It’s because you were-?”

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo says.

Jongin’s brows furrow, troubled and confused, struggling to find something to say as he opens and closes his mouth numbly. 

Kyungsoo presses forward onto a more urgent matter. 

“Why would someone want to have you killed?” he asks and Jongin balks at the questions, visibly swallowing. 

“I don’t- I mean it can’t be-” Jongin frowns, trailing off uncertainly.

“What is it?” Kyungsoo probes. 

Jongin looks up at him, biting his lip before breathing out a sigh. 

“There’s been a string of John Doe cases at the hospital recently,” he starts. “I started looking into them when things weren’t adding up after the last one came in but the board keeps dismissing my reports and inquires, refusing to look into it. Their medical charts are locked now, I can’t access them anymore.”

“What did you find?” Kyungsoo frowns, trying to find a link between this and Chuwon’s reason for having him eliminated. 

“The autopsy reports weren’t accurate, they were missing details,” Jongin says. “I treated the last one that came in before he died of a gunshot wound but he had traces of plutonium and uranium in his bloodstream. He had the exact same symptoms as the other John Doe’s that came in but their charts were being altered to erase any mention of it.”

“Plutonium?” Kyungsoo frowns. 

“They all had radiation poisoning,” Jongin goes on. 

“Why would they care about that?” Kyungsoo mutters under his breath, feeling like something’s missing from the puzzle.

“They don’t tell you this stuff before sending you off to kill someone?” Jongin probably intends for it to sound a little more scathing than it does but Kyungsoo can see the lines of fear all over his face. He looks shaken. 

“Not this time,” Kyungsoo says simply. 

Jongin looks down at the table, fidgeting with his hands before standing up slowly and retreating to his bedroom.

▸

It's still difficult to shower when he's trying to avoid getting his stitches wet. Jongin had been very clear about keeping them dry and Kyungsoo has no intention of prolonging this healing period.

His movements are still stiff, hindered by the painful pull of the stitches on his skin and the ache of the injury itself that still hasn't done much healing yet. Kyungsoo groans as he bends over to pull on a fresh pair of pants after drying himself off, slipping a loose shirt over his head. 

Jongin is pacing around the kitchen when Kyungsoo emerges from the bathroom, a frown creasing his forehead as he gnaws on the tip of his thumb, clearly anxious. 

"Do you have a phone here?" he turns to Kyungsoo before he can ask what's wrong. "I need to call the hospital, I've been gone from work for too long. I need to go back."

Kyungsoo throws his towel aside, frowning. 

"You can't," he says incredulously, glad that he actually doesn't have a landline here that Jongin's might have used while he was distracted.

"You're a target now, they're still looking for you out there," Kyungsoo tells him. "The second you leave here, they'll find you and-"

He stops himself from saying 'kill you' for Jongin's benefit but the implication is still there and Jongin gets it loud and clear. He frowns deeper and turns away but Kyungsoo can still see his hands shaking. 

"Are you?" he asks quietly, still facing away. He doesn't elaborate but Kyungsoo knows what he's asking. If Kyungsoo is just playing with him, if he's going to kill him anyway, if this was all part of some bigger plan all along to the same end.

"No." 

 

Jongin retreats to his room after that and Kyungsoo putters around in the kitchen, trying to find something to do. Everything is a mess, particularly since he’s dragged Jongin into a situation where he’s stuck with him, knowing what he knows about Kyungsoo’s own life. He can’t expect Jongin to understand or be okay with it. He remembers a time when he was disgusted at himself for taking on these jobs before he realized and accepted that it was the only way something would ever be done to people who continue to get away with things. 

Still, at least Jongin hasn’t shut himself off completely from Kyungsoo, though he can’t tell what’s going through Jongin’s mind. He’s clearly uncomfortable, maybe even fearful, and Kyungsoo feels his stomach drop at how things have turned out. 

He pulls out some food from the fridge, absently chopping up some vegetables, barely paying attention to the rice and meat he’s trying to cook. The sizzling sound of the meat frying is like white noise, clearing his mind for a few relieving moments. 

Kyungsoo hears the bedroom door opening and turns in time to see Jongin shuffling in, his shoulders hunched up with his hands in his pockets.

“It smells delicious,” he notes quietly, standing uncertainly at the doorway like he doesn’t know if he should come in or retreat again. 

“There’s enough for two if you’d like,” Kyungsoo says, having intended to make enough for both of them anyway.

Jongin nods slowly, taking a decisive step forward and pulls a chair out to sit at the table while Kyungsoo serves the food on plates for both of them. 

They eat in silence, with nothing but the clinking sounds of their cutlery against the plates, slicing through the meat. Jongin shovels spoonfuls of rice into his mouth, clearly famished and Kyungsoo munches his own food quietly,

“Do you regret doing what you do?” Jongin asks suddenly, shifting rice around his bowl with his spoon.

Kyungsoo finishes his mouthful, eyeing Jongin pensively. “No.”

Jongin frowns, clearly not having expected that answer from him. He sets down his spoon, his mouth falling open a little. 

“But- you’re taking people’s lives.”

Kyungsoo narrows his eyes. “They’re _bad_ people.”

“That’s not a good enough reason to kill!” Jongin says incredulously.

“Isn’t it?” Kyungsoo retorts. “Don’t you ever wonder if it would be better for everyone to stop when someone brings a rapist to your operating table?”

“I took an oath,” Jongin throws back. “My job is to save lives, to treat everyone’s life equally when they need saving. The authorities deal with whatever comes after that.”

“The authorities?” Kyungsoo scoffs, gripping his fork tightly in his fist. “They’re powerless. The justice system is flawed and biased, swayed by bribes and connections.”

“Criminals get the sentence they deserve-”

“Criminals always get away with whatever they want with the right kind of money and lawyers. They’re back out on the streets in no time, back to doing the shit that hurts others.” 

“You _kill_ people!”

“How is it any different from state approved capital punishment? I find a permanent solution to a problem that the law refuses to fix,” Kyungsoo fires back. “Why should I just stand by when I know there’s something I can do about it where no one else will? 

“That’s not your decision to make,” Jongin exclaims, incredulously. “You can’t just decide whose life you can or can’t take. It’s not your call.”

“Why can’t I? What is their life worth compared to the innocent people who suffer because of them? They don’t deserve to walk free and keep doing what they do.”

“Killing people won’t take away the pain they’ve caused”

“No but it will keep them from making more people suffer.”

“Then what does that make you?” Jongin shouts. “You’re murdering people because you think it’s right out of your own tailored moral conscience. What does that make you?”

“It makes me the person who keeps this shit from happening over and over again. People don’t change,” Kyungsoo says. “Would you rather let a person keep beating their child just because it’s ‘wrong’ to stop him the only way that it would _work_?”

“That’s not what I said,” Jongin grits out. “There’s other ways, you don’t have to kill them to get justice.”

“There is no justice. I don’t like doing what I do, but I don’t regret it either. If me being a monster is what it takes to save other innocent people’s lives then so be it.”

“Except you take a life for a cheque. Is it really about justice for you or about the money?”

Kyungsoo freezes, pressing his teeth together, feeling the back of his throat ache. 

“I already told you why I’m doing this,” he says quietly. He can see the red stains again, hot and sticky, dripping all around him. 

Jongin clamps his mouth shut, looking torn between angry and mildly apologetic. 

He slams down his fork, losing his appetite and Jongin pushes his plate aside too, scraping his chair back and marching out of the kitchen.

▸

Jongin seems to have resigned himself to staying here for a while but there’s complete silence between them in the days that follow. He doesn’t talk to Kyungsoo, barely emerging from his room if only just to skirt into the kitchen for food before retreating inside again, clearly avoiding him. Kyungsoo can’t blame him.

He sits on the couch stiffly, still uncomfortable from the stitches and stays on the news channel most of the time, for lack of anything else to watch. There’s all the usual reports, a consistent stream of crimes and an endless trail of open case murders. His way may not be perfect, nor traditionally ethical, but at least it’s effective.

At one point there’s a segment on the hospital, reporting a number of bullets being found at the hospital carpark though no bodies were found. Jongin stiffens when the segment comes on, having just been on his way back to the bedroom from the kitchen. He freezes, not looking at Kyungsoo before heading back to his room. 

Kyungsoo’s been having trouble sleeping at night, opting to sit on the ledge by the fire escape instead, feeling hollow. There’s a cool breeze coming through the gap underneath the window and Kyungsoo shivers but doesn’t move.

The sound of something hard sliding on the floor behind him startles him and he turns to find Jongin getting down on his knees silently, tugging the med kit box in front of him. 

“Lift up your shirt,” he instructs him quietly, taking out a fresh roll of gauze. Kyungsoo obeys, holding his shirt up as Jongin takes off the old dressing to replace it with a clean one. The wound still hurts but Jongin’s touch is gentle. 

“When I was a kid, I used to go kick a ball around in the park with my best friend, Chungho,” Jongin starts casually, his eyes still focused on the gauze. Kyungsoo listens attentively, holding as still as possible. 

“We’d go every day after school, whenever we had the time. Sometimes we’d challenge the other kids in the park to a match,” Jongin says, smoothing down the tape over the edges of the dressing. “We even had a college picked out to go together.”

He looks down, packing up the medkit again. “We didn’t get many drive-by’s in my area but the one time we did, they got Chungho.”

Jongin finally looks up at him, his eyes filled with old grief and a new sort of resolve. His expression is calm, missing the anger Kyungsoo had seen the last time they spoke. 

“I used to wish something terrible would happen to the man who shot Chungho but instead he only got a few years behind bars,” Jongin manages a small smile. “That’s when I realized I wanted to do something with myself that would help people, to save them when they’re in trouble because of these kinds of people.”

Kyungsoo drops his shirt back down, shifting to sit on the floor in front of Jongin, bringing them to the same level. 

“We have different views on these things,” Jongin goes on stoutly. “And I realize it’s not the black and white polar opposites I thought it was. I guess I’m saying I see why you do it.” 

He falls silent, suddenly looking a little unsure of himself.

“I don’t do this for fun,” Kyungsoo murmurs and Jongin nods, looking like he desperately needed to hear that. 

“It’s not for the money either,” he adds and Jongin bows his head apologetically at that. 

“But you don’t regret it.”

“No. I don’t.”

Jongin drags a hand through his hair, frowning. 

“When you put it the way you do, it’s almost hard to argue with your logic even though I still can’t seem to get on board with it,” Jongin sighs finally. “I don’t know. Everything is so fucked up anyway, maybe the world needs this. A little bit of both to balance it out.”

Kyungsoo blinks in surprise at that, startled that he’s finding a compromise in the whole situation where they can come to an understanding they can both deal with. 

“For what it’s worth, your argument is solid too,” Kyungsoo tells him. “I think about it the same way every time, trying to figure out what’s reasonable. It’s just that- I need to do more than just wait for them to actually hurt someone.”

“How many?”

Kyungsoo stares down at his his hands, feeling a sudden spike of shame for the first time since he started doing this. “Eight.”

Jongin sucks in a deep breath, nodding slowly. 

“Were they bad?”

“The worst” Kyungsoo says darkly. Rapists, murderers, child traffickers, all the like.

Jongin swallows, seeming to try and make his peace with all this. 

“Thank you,” Jongin says instead. “For saving my life.” 

“You too,” Kyungsoo says, feeling another painful twinge in his side from the stitches. 

“Doesn't it get lonely?” Jongin asks suddenly, staring at him intently. “Trying to take responsibility for them yourself?

Kyungsoo thinks about the cold walls in his empty apartment and the silence he’d come home to everyday, filled with nothing but memories of every past task and every other to come. 

“Yeah,” he says, holding Jongin’s gaze. “It does.”

▸

There isn’t much to do around the house while they’re laying low. Kyungsoo is still too weak to even consider sneaking out at night to see what’s happening on the other side. At least they have a TV with enough channels to keep them entertained for a while.

Jongin sits on the lumpy armchair at first, bearing with the broken springs under the cushion until he gives in and settles down on the small couch beside Kyungsoo.

“You know I haven’t asked yet, but why did you get this place when you already have an apartment?” Jongin asks one afternoon during the commercial break.

“Guess I knew something like this might happen,” Kyungsoo hums, flicking a stray crumb off the couch cushion. 

“That you would be forced into cohabitation with the person you were supposed to kill but didn't?” Jongin says and Kyungsoo turns to him, alarmed, but Jongin has a smile on his face, clearly taking the situation a lot more lightly now, however morbid. 

“More on the lines of me being hunted down, but you’re not too bad for company I suppose,” Kyungsoo says, returning with a quirk of a smile himself.

Jongin scoffs, turning back to the TV, seizing the remote and changing the channel himself. 

 

Jongin has to borrow Kyungsoo’s clothes for a while since he doesn't have anything else with him but the clothes he had on the night Kyungsoo saved him and brought him here. Most of them are way too small for him but it’ll have to do. Kyungsoo has to keep himself from spluttering with laughter when Jongin walks in with one of Kyungsoo’s T-shirts stretched tightly across his chest and his sweats stopping a few inches over his ankles.

Jongin flushes, looking down at himself self consciously and Kyungsoo looks apologetic, not knowing what’s come over him. It’s been a long time since he’s laughed this freely, maybe even at all, nor felt this kind of lightness in his chest; ironic considering the situation they’re in. 

It’s starting to feel like they’re almost back at that place they were before any of this mess happened, before Kyungsoo got Jongin’s picture and before Jongin knew everything about him. It feels like they’re back at the grocery store, talking about things as mundane as cookie crumble ice cream. It’s just good to see Jongin smile again. Smiling at him. 

He’s taking all of this into stride surprisingly well, especially after the rocky start they had the first couple of days. It’s not easy to stomach Kyungsoo’s secrets once they’re out there and Kyungsoo is just infinitely grateful that Jongin is somehow looking past them enough to not be distant from him like he’d expected. Laying low is a lot easier with someone to pass the time with, at least till he’s healed enough to move properly without tearing something open. 

“So what’s the plan exactly?” Jongin asks finally, turning to him and sits cross-legged on the couch. “How long do we have to stay here?” 

Kyungsoo mulls over it, not having a definite answer, though it’s all that’s been on his mind since they got here.

“I can’t do anything yet till I’m better,” he says, gingerly patting the wound on his side. “I need to figure out why they needed you dead so badly.”

Jongin swallows nervously at that. 

“What about you?” Jongin asks. “You said they were helping you with your brother.”

“I’ll have to figure that out by myself,” Kyungsoo murmurs grimly, realizing he’s being thrown back to square one.

▸

Kyungsoo's wound finally starts to heal enough that he can walk without trouble. Jongin took the stitches out the day before though he warns him firmly that he still needs more rest. They're running a little lower on food that Kyungsoo is comfortable with, having stocked the place up with one person in mind, but they've still got some to go before Kyungsoo has to risk sneaking out to go get more.

When he emerges from his bedroom, Jongin is already in the kitchen, hunched over something on the table. Kyungsoo steps closer, peering over his shoulder and catches sight of a banana lying on its side with its skin open. Jongin is tugging at something, so focused on it that he doesn't hear Kyungsoo coming up behind him. 

"What are you doing?"

Jongin jumps at the sudden sound of his voice, dropping the objects in his hands. Kyungsoo sees the needle and thread lying on the table, connected to what look like stitches on the banana's skin.

"You startled me," Jongin glares at him, picking up the needle again and a pair of specialized scissors to hold the needle in. 

Kyungsoo sits down in the chair beside him, looking at him curiously. Jongin sighs and offers a small smile, staring down at the half stitched up banana peel. 

"I practice sutures on bananas when I'm feeling on edge or stressed out," he admits and Kyungsoo bows his head guiltily, knowing that he’s had a hand in making him feel that way.

He swallows, trying to find something to say to distract from the thought.

"They look really neat," he says nodding his chin at the banana. 

Jongin smiles, looking pleased. He glances up, looking at the fruit bowl and pauses before grabbing another banana. 

"D'you want to try it out?" he says, holding it out to him. 

"What, me? Doing that?" Kyungsoo raises his eyebrows in surprise, staring down at the fruit Jongin sets down in front of him. 

"Yeah, come on, I'll show you," Jongin beams, sliding his chair over closer to Kyungsoo's. He breaks open the banana peel, leaving an open slit along the length to work on and hands the needle and thread over to Kyungsoo, showing him how to position the needle driver. 

The needle wobbles in the driver and Kyungsoo looks at Jongin uncertainly. Chuckling, Jongin leans closer, reaching out to steady his hand with his own and murmurs instructions on how to push the needle in and drag it out. 

"Just twist your wrist a little," Jongin says, pressing his thumb into Kyungsoo's pulse point to shift the angle of his hand and Kyungsoo lets him, following his lead. Jongin's fingers are soft and gentle on his, but Kyungsoo is more distracted by his warmth pressing into his side as he leans in closer to get better access to his wrist. 

The first suture comes out a little wonky and Jongin chuckles, encouraging him to try the next one. Kyungsoo obliges, surprised at how shaky his hands are considering his line of work. He has to breathe out a laugh at the awful, messy job he does with the next three sutures and Jongin hides his own grin behind his hand. 

"Well. You're on the right track," Jongin's voice is thick with barely contained amusement, his eyes curved upwards with his laugh. 

Kyungsoo mirrors his smile, setting the tools down and pushing the banana away. Clearly he won’t be considering medicine as a future career path any time soon. Jongin slides the banana over to his own side of the table and picks up the needle again, finishing the rest of the sutures tidily with practiced ease. Kyungsoo watches the way his hands move and the expression on his face as he works, feeling something heavy setting in his chest because he's taken all this away from him. 

"I'm sorry," he says again, feeling like it’s a million times too little for this kind of apology. "For doing all this to you."

Jongin must have sensed a change of tone coming because he's unfazed by Kyungsoo's words, focusing on tying a knot in the thread when he's stitched the whole banana skin up. 

"You know, maybe I got lucky that I was meant to be your hit," he says, getting up to clean the tools and put them back in the medkit. "Technically, if it weren't for you, I'd actually be dead." 

He turns around and leans back against the sink, folding his arms across his chest. His eyes meet Kyungsoo's again, keeping them fixed on him and Kyungsoo almost wants to bow his head and look away, but he knows Jongin's actually right. 

He thinks back to when Chuwon first gave him the pictures of Jongin, feeling a weird bubble of thankfulness swelling in his chest now that he was in Kyungsoo's hands or he wouldn't be there standing across the room with a hint of a smile growing on his lips.

▸

Kyungsoo has been glued to his laptop day and night, going over every file and document Seungsoo left behind. This is everything he’s got left from his brother, having gotten to sweep his apartment before the police got to it. Kyungsoo found the hard drive next to Seungsoo’s laptop, making a copy of his for himself and leaving everything else in for evidence that might help the police’s case in convicting the man who killed him.

He’s been through these documents a thousand times over, flipping through the files on his screen again and again, reading through the words and numbers to find some sort of correlation somewhere, but he’s still coming up empty. 

He’s been losing sleep over this, spurred on by a sense of urgency since he turned on Chuwon and the organization so abruptly. Now that he’s cut off from their resources, he has to figure this out by himself. Seungsoo had a jumble of documents with records of strange transactions and funds moving, reports of imports and exports that don’t seem to make sense and blueprints of steel containers. He can’t figure out what exactly Seungsoo was looking into. It feels like it should be obvious, but he’s missing the key part.

He doesn’t even hear the door opening until Jongin is right beside him, idly leaning over the back of the couch to peer at the screen. 

“It’s 3am,” he says, his voice a little huskier than usual from sleep. “Are you still reading those?”

Kyungsoo breathes out a sigh, dropping his head back against the couch tiredly. 

“I keep hitting a wall,” he murmurs, feeling desperate and hopeless. 

Jongin hums, rounding the couch to sit down next to him. 

“That’s weird.”

Kyungsoo turns to look at him, seeing Jongin frowning at the laptop screen.

“What is it?”

“Over here,” he says, pointing at one of the addresses on a document he has pulled up from the exports file. “That’s the exact same area the John Doe’s were from. I noticed the name on their charts before I was sealed out of the archives.”

Kyungsoo stares at him, confused staring back at the screen. He’s got the blueprints pulled up again and he stares at them, thinking about everything else he’s been staring at for the past few months. It suddenly falls into place and Kyungsoo feels his chest tighten, going cold when it hits him. 

They’re linked. Jongin being targeted for trying to report the dead bodies is linked to whatever his brother was looking into. The government wanted Jongin dead to keep him quiet. Traces of Plutonium in the bodies’ bloodstreams. Radiation poisoning. Export reports. Kyungsoo flips the screen over to the blueprints and finally recognizes the machinery designs. Containment tanks for radioactive, nuclear material. They’re making nuclear weapons and selling them. 

“Seungsoo knew,” he breathes in shock, his hands falling away from his laptop. “He- you- they wanted you dead to keep you quiet. These documents, it’s not some private organization, it’s _theirs_ , Seungsoo knew what they were doing, they-”

They’re the ones who killed him. 

“They killed him,” Kyungsoo whispers, his chest constricting and suddenly he can’t breathe. They lied to him, sending him on a wild goose chase with made up leads, they manipulated him, they-

“I helped them,” he chokes out, feeling dirty. “ _Fuck_ , I thought they were- I _helped_ them.”

“Kyungsoo, breathe,” Jongin says urgently, taking the laptop away and kneels up in front of him. 

“They killed my brother and I shook their hand,” Kyungsoo’s entire body is shaking, feeling his fingers going numb, nauseous to a point where he thinks he might actually throw up. He can’t tell if he’s going dizzy from the panic or if his eyes are just blurring over from tears, but his limbs feel too heavy to move. His ears are ringing, everything swirling in his vision and he can hear his blood pumping in his head.

“Easy, hey,” Jongin’s pierces through the calamity in his head. “Just focus on me okay, focus on my hand.”

Kyungsoo registers the press of Jongin’s fingers around his wrist, pressing into his pulse point. He helped his brother’s killers, he did their work for them; he can’t breathe-

“Kyungsoo, listen to me. I’m going to tap on your wrist, just breathe with me, okay?” Jongin’s face swims into his vision again, his expression concerned but calm. Kyungsoo anchors on to that image. 

“I’ve got you,” Jongin murmurs, tapping his fingers against Kyungsoo’s pulse, setting a slow pace and Kyungsoo fights to breathe through the tightness in his chest, to match the pace. “You’re okay.”

Kyungsoo lets his words wash over him, listening to the soothing tone of his voice to block out the sound of his thundering heart in his ears. The tapping grounds him, and he follows Jongin’s pace until he stops feeling like his chest is about to burst open. 

Jongin reaches over, brushing a few stray tears away from his cheek and draws him up from the couch, tugging him into his room and lays down on one side of the bed, patting the other to draw Kyungsoo down too. 

He doesn’t break the silence and Kyungsoo appreciates it, needing more time to sort through the chaos in his head, to reconcile what he’s been doing these past few months. He feels a spike of guilt surging up his throat again, the wave of grief washing over him again, tinged with anger. Lying down helps him think better and breathe more easily, finally feeling less like the earth is crumbling beneath him. 

“We’ll get them,” Jongin says quietly, finally breaking the silence. “The hospital has all the records, we can get them and figure out what the hell is going on together, right? We can fix this.”

Kyungsoo turns to look at him, eyes settling on the softness of his expression. He offers a small smile and nods, feeling too exhausted to try for words. The ache in his chest settles gradually as his eyes begin to droop. 

“I’m sorry about your brother,” Jongin says quietly. 

Kyungsoo closes his eyes. “Me too.”

▸

Kyungsoo takes him up on his word to head back to the hospital the next day, dressing up in dark clothes and covering their faces warily the moment they step out of the house. It’s a lot harder to stay hidden on Kyungsoo’s bike but they’ll have to make do with what they’ve got.

“Watch out for the cameras,” Kyungsoo murmurs when they step inside, keeping his head low. 

Jongin nods, already familiar with where they are. He tugs Kyungsoo into one of the locker rooms, snatching up a pair of white lab coats for them both. Jongin slips on a white facemask to cover the lower part of his face, and Kyungsoo settles for his own thick rimmed glasses. 

They get through the main corridor without attracting any attention to themselves, slipping through the bustle of gurneys and rushing doctors with ease. They make their way to corner leading to the reception counter where the records computer is. Jongin hisses and takes a step back behind the wall right before they round it, grabbing one of the files off the shelves and pretends to be checking the patient’s charts. 

“What’s wrong?” Kyungsoo says, falling into the act with him to look natural. 

“The nurse at the counter knows me,” Jongin groans, flipping a page over and pointing at a random word. 

Kyungsoo bites his lip, thinking it over for a moment before reaching into his pocket. 

“Okay, here,” he says, slipping a small thumbdrive into Jongin’s hand. “You do the extraction from the computer instead, and I’ll distract her. Just copy everything you can on it.”

Jongin nods, handing him the file to use as a distraction and Kyungsoo goes forward first, heading up to the counter. The nurse smiles up at him in greeting and he returns it. 

“Hey, do you mind looking over this with me? There seems to be a few pages missing,” he says, holding the chart open and moving to one end of the counter so she’ll follow. He draws her out further, coaxing her over to the shelving unit away from the counter to grab another handful of charts. 

He watches Jongin emerge from behind the wall, slipping behind the high counter the moment the nurse’s back is turned, ducking low so he can’t be seen by anyone else. 

Kyungsoo buys more time, dropping the files in his hand to scatter the papers on the floor between them. It’s enough to keep the nurse busy as she scrambles to gather them back up, helping her to put them back in the right files. 

He keeps an eye on the counter with bated breath until Jongin finally slips out with a nod and Kyungsoo gathers the files up quickly, ending the conversation with the excuse that he’s being paged. 

Jongin is waiting for him a short way ahead, falling into step with him when Kyungsoo catches up. They ditch the lab coats before heading out of the building through the back, back to where Kyungsoo left his bike in the car park. 

There are voices up ahead and Kyungsoo holds a hand out in front of Jongin warily, ushering him behind one of the parked cars as they catch pieces of a conversation. The smell of smoke wafts in towards them, carried by the wind; it’s just a pair of doctors on their smoke break. 

Kyungsoo almost stands back up to get going until he catches some of the words clearly.

“-lot easier now that Kim isn’t around anymore.”

Jongin’s eyes widen, listening to them talk about him. 

“They’s going with the story that he quit, right?” the other man says, following it with a derisive laugh. “Like Kim Jongin ever knew how to quit.” 

“Where do you suppose he is now?”

There’s a pause. “They’ve probably taken care of him by now. You know they don’t like keeping problems like him around when he’s meddling in their business.” 

Kyungsoo watches recognition and confusion swimming in Jongin’s eyes, his mouth falling open at the realization that the staff in the hospital has been compromised too. 

“Let’s head back.” 

They both stiffen when they hear the footsteps coming closer but they turn in the other direction. 

“You know them?” Kyungsoo asks delicately. Jongin still looks shocked. 

“Yeah,” he breathes out. “My supervisors. They’re on the board.” 

Kyungsoo gets to his feet, helping Jongin up to make their way to Kyungsoo’s bike. 

“I can’t believe they were in on this too,” he says, looking lost as he climbs on the bike. “It’s no wonder they were so adamant on taking me off the case.”

“The government has their claws in everything,” Kyungsoo says, knowing full well how far their reach is. He starts the engine, pulling out of the carpark to take them back home. 

 

The pull up the files Jongin had extracted on Kyungsoo’s laptop, perched on his lap. Jongin leans over to get a look at the screen curiously, shifting closer to him on the couch. 

“They’ve been encrypted,” Kyungsoo mutters, opening up a decryption program he’s had since he was in the force, hoping it will work on this. 

“It’s why I couldn’t access the files anymore,” Jongin says. 

The progress bar loads the decryption, finally reaching 100% and the full files open up across his screen. 

“There,” Jongin points immediately to the column of numbers on the charts indicating the level of chemicals found in the bloodstream. “High levels of plutonium. They were all dying of radiation poisoning, but the actual cause of death was a gunshot wound.” 

“Their bodies look like they’re in tact,” Kyungsoo frowns through the photographs from the morgue. “Why are they still John Doe’s?”

“Their fingerprints were burnt off,” Jongin says darkly. “And their teeth didn’t match with anyone in any database. It’s like their identities were completely erased off the system, like they never existed.”

“They probably were,” Kyungsoo muses. “It matches with Seungsoo’s findings.”

He swallows over his brother’s name, breathing in slowly before going on. Jongin doesn’t push. 

“If those blueprints are right, they’re dealing with enough nuclear material to raise a lot of red flags.” 

“Weapons?” Jongin asks. 

“Bombs even,” Kyungsoo pulls up the export reports that were buried till Seungsoo found them. 

“And they’re selling them,” Kyungsoo says grimly, staring at the fund movements bouncing between multiple different accounts. “I just can’t figure out who’s getting paid.”

He pushes the laptop away, setting it down on the coffee table.

“I’m going to go check it out,” he decides, getting to his feet. 

“Well, I’m coming with you,” Jongin declares, standing up with him and Kyungsoo gapes at him incredulously. 

“Jongin, it’s way too dangerous, these people are trying to kill you,” he says, frowning. 

“They’re trying to kill you too, aren’t they?” Jongin retorts calmly, his face determined. 

“I can take care of myself.”

“So can I.”

Kyungsoo stares at him in disbelief but Jongin just stares back at him, standing his ground. He sighs exasperatedly, rubbing the back of his neck. 

“I can’t talk you out of this, can I?” 

Jongin looks satisfied, offering a grim smile. 

“These people have turned my life upside down trying to kill me,” he sighs, the exhaustion and strain finally showing on his face. “I just want to be there to see exactly what’s going on, so I can be part of it when we take them down. I owe it to every John Doe in the hospital too.”

Kyungsoo’s chest swells a little when he says ‘we’, feeling a somewhat misplaced mixture of relief and contentment that Jongin thinks of them as a team together. He sighs, coming back to the matter at hand, wondering if he should teach him how to hold a gun first, or use a knife. It can’t hurt to be prepared if he absolutely _has_ to come. Kyungsoo understands where he’s coming from, aware that he would do the exact same thing if he were in Jongin’s shoes. 

He decides to just show him some self defence moves instead, tugging him out from behind the couch to the open space of the living room. Jongin complies easily, letting Kyungsoo instruct him on how to move and lets him position his arms and legs. 

“Right, like that and just-” Kyungsoo leans in to shift Jongin’s hips more sideways to finish the stance. He’s aware of how close he’s standing to Jongin, with his hands still on his hips and pulls away quickly, swallowing through his dry throat. Jongin looks a little pink but he’s staring at the floor instead, holding up the position. 

Kyungsoo moves on to the next move quickly, opting to show Jongin how to get out of a chokehold and disarm someone who’s behind him. It takes a few tries and it’s still fairly sloppy, at best, but Jongin is a quick learner and he manages it well enough with the right coordination. 

“Okay, I think that should be enough,” Kyungsoo pants, setting his hands on his hips to catch his breath. He’s still not too happy about Jongin coming with him, thinking about everything that could go possibly go wrong while they’re there. He might not be able to save him a second time if they’re spotted.

He realizes belatedly how this must look for Jongin, that Kyungsoo would know these moves with such practiced ease and who he must use them on because Jongin looks at him strangely.

“What is it?” he says, gearing himself up to see the disgust in Jongin’s eyes again and his harsh, true words.

But Jongin just shakes his head, with a small smile. “You’re just different from what I thought you’d be like.”

Kyungsoo hesitates before talking again. “Do I scare you?”

They’ve been staying together in the same apartment for a while now but they’ve never actually gone back to address the issue of what Kyungsoo’s done and how Jongin feels about this whole situation. 

“No,” Jongin says sincerely, looking straight at him. “You don’t.”

Kyungsoo manages a small smile, thinking to himself that he really should be, even though he realizes deep down that he desperately doesn’t want Jongin to be. It’s probably why his chest finally feels a whole lot lighter when Jongin says that.

▸

They wait until it’s dark to head out to the marked area in Seungsoo’s files, driving out on Kyungsoo’s bike, way out of town, into a more desolate, depressed area. It takes a while to actually find what they’re looking for once they’re there, since both Jongin’s reports and Seungsoo’s findings only mentioned the general area rather than specific coordinates.

Eventually they come across an old run down factory further isolated from the rest of the residential houses. Kyungsoo notices the new looking containers off to the side that indicate it’s definitely being used despite what the rest of the building may look like from the outside. 

Kyungsoo kills the engine a short way away to avoid making noise and alerting whoever’s inside that they’re here. Jongin follows close behind him as Kyungsoo treads carefully on site, looking out for any security cameras or motion sensors. 

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s around,” Jongin whispers, keeping his eyes peeled. 

“The workers might have gone home but there’s definitely security in there,” Kyungsoo says, looking for any point of entry that they can take without risking being seen. 

He catches sight of the parked trucks sitting by the side of the building, spotting an opening along the roof of the factory if they can get close enough to the vehicles. 

Nudging Jongin forward, they stay low as they make their way too them, wary of triggering any sensors that might be in place. It’s a brilliant cover, setting up whatever operation it is they’re running here in such a remote area. This place would just look abandoned to anyone just passing by, not even listed on the maps after having gone out of service years ago. 

The trucks are a lot bigger up close, shipment trucks meant for bulk delivery. Kyungsoo spots the faded logo on the side of the truck, though he can’t quite make it out in the dark. He pulls out his phone, risking a little light from the built in torch and flashes it across the image quickly. 

He recognizes the logo immediately. Soviet. 

“They’re selling weapons to the Russians,” Kyungsoo hisses, snapping a few shots of it with his phone before stuffing it back into his pocket. 

“How the hell are we even going to prove that with just a logo?” Jongin asks, linking his hands together to give Kyungsoo a leg up to the top of the truck. His height gives him an advantage, climbing up on the tire and grabbing onto the edge by himself before Kyungsoo helps haul him up. 

“I’m working on it,” Kyungsoo mutters, pulling out a steel case that was latched onto his belt. He opens it carefully to show Jongin the tiny devices inside. “We can start by bugging the place.”

He tacks a tracking device onto the truck for good measure and moves on to jump onto the low wall on the side of the building. It leads right around to the side where the windows are and they slip inside carefully, unnoticed judging by the lack of shrieking alarm bells.

The inside of the factory is a complete contrast to its exterior, packed with high tech machinery and generators. The containers Kyungsoo had seen in the blueprints are set up along the length of the factory, lined up in a row. No one is around where they are, making it easier for them to slip down onto the railings and walk along the path unnoticed. Kyungsoo takes the chance to slip the rest of the bugs in his case along the tanks, hiding them inconspicuously around the railings and in behind bolts on the steel walls, making sure he has ears around the whole place when he listens in. 

Jongin works on taking pictures of whatever he can, focusing on the tanks and the generators down below. 

“Can’t believe they’ve managed to keep all this hidden,” Jongin mutters. Kyungsoo hums in agreement, looking around at the vast operation they’ve managed to get going on under everyone’s noses. 

A sudden noise jerks him into attention and he grabs onto Jongin’s elbow, tugging him away from the main path as the sound of echoing footsteps comes closer. They slip into the narrow space between two large steel containers, hiding from view in the shadows. It’s too crammed in here to even have enough breathing space between them, pressed up very close together, almost nose to nose until the footsteps disappear.

There’s a heavy silence between them and Kyungsoo’s heart rate picks up a little at the proximity though he tries not to let it show on his face. Jongin doesn’t quite manage it, looking down shyly, though he’s tall enough that looking down doesn’t really hide his face from Kyungsoo. He can see the pink of his cheeks perfectly from where he is. 

They get moving again, filling out the main areas where Kyungsoo hasn’t left any bugs yet before deciding it’ll have to be enough as it is. They sneak out the same way they came in, managing to avoid running into any other patrolling security guards.

 

It’s late when they finally get back to the house but neither of them is sleepy enough to turn in, both settling down on the couch to mull over the pictures Jongin took. Kyungsoo 

“So you think that guy, Chuwon, is in on this whole thing?” Jongin asks, flicking through the pictures. 

Kyungsoo nods, gritting his teeth at the name. “Seungsoo must have been about to report it but they got to him before he could.”

They’re going to need a lot more concrete proof than a couple of photographs and blueprints to expose them, he muses. Chuwon is just the right hand man, the contact on the outside overseeing that the operation goes smoothly. He’s answering to someone else, someone bigger, with more power deep within the government. The question is who.

▸

They keep the stream coming through from the bugs on throughout the day, not wanting to miss anything useful that might come through. Most of the noise that comes through is from the workers themselves, calling out to each other over the sounds of the hissing machinery.

Kyungsoo monitors the stream most of the time, eyeing the red dot of the tracking device he’d left on the truck on his laptop screen, still unmoving. They haven’t shipped out another load yet. Occasionally, a new set of voices filters through the bugs, more authoritative, calling out orders. They’re clearly the ones in charge, likely running the operation from this end while they answer to someone else, Chuwon probably. It’s still not enough to be incriminating though. Kyungsoo runs a hand through his hair in frustration, wondering if this is even going anywhere like this. 

Jongin takes over for him every now and then to give him a break, pushing him over to the couch to sit in from of the TV with a plate of food that Jongin drops in his hands. Kyungsoo smiles appreciatively, ravenously taking a bite out of the sandwich. He pulls Jongin down with him on the couch, muting the TV even though Jongin has the headphones on to listen to the audio more clearly. They don’t talk but Kyungsoo feels more settled sitting here like this, even without the sound from the TV. 

He hadn’t registered how bone tired he was till he’s jerked out of the nap he hadn’t realized he was taking on Jongin’s shoulder. Jongin is shaking him awake, unplugging the headphones from the laptop to let the sound flow out through the speakers. 

“-another one dropped out.”

Jongin mimes the phone with his hand to indicate that they’re on a phone call. There’s a pause while whoever’s on the other end of the line speaks, inaudible to them. 

“Cha Youngjin,” comes through the speaker again. “How should we proceed?” 

A pause again and Kyungsoo scrambles to look up the name frantically, searching in the police database he still has access to since his days in the forse, praying that his identity hasn’t been erased just yet. 

“We’ll deal with him, sir.” They must be talking to Chuwon. 

“If he dropped out, then he might be willing to help us,” Kyungsoo mutters, typing furiously. 

He gets a hit on the name, skimming through the details quickly, finding an address.

“That’s on the outskirts of the city,” Jongin says. “Can we even make it in time?” 

“We’ll have to try,” Kyungsoo grunts, snatching up his keys.

Jongin clings to Kyungsoo’s middle the whole ride there as he drives way past the speed limit, swerving dangerously fast around the corners on his bike. There’s no time to worry about being spotted. 

By some miracle, they find the right address almost immediately, pulling up in front of the house. It’s a small, rickety place, almost the size of a large shed. Kyungsoo has noticed that about a lot of the houses around this area. 

The door is still locked when he tries it, in tact too which means there’s a chance that they’re the first ones here. He picks the lock without too much difficulty, swinging it open slowly. It’s dark inside and the air is stuffy and musty, smelling faintly of vomit. Jongin closes the door behind them quietly, following Kyungsoo deeper into the house. 

A floorboard creaks under Kyungsoo’s shoe and he freezes immediately, hissing under his breath. 

“You know, it’s polite to knock when you come to a man’s home to kill him.” 

A hoarse voice comes from the bedroom up ahead and Kyungsoo sighs, dropping the prowling. 

He looks back at Jongin who coaxes him forward into the bedroom. The elderly man the voice belongs to is lying in his bed, covered in his sheets. His eyes are bloodshot and he seems to be having trouble breathing properly, too weak to even move his head much to look at them when they come in. 

“Cha Youngjin?”

“In the flesh,” the man croaks. “So, Chuwon sent you to clean up after himself?”

Kyungsoo perks up at the name, confirming his assumption that he’s at least partially behind this whole thing. 

“We’re not working for Chuwon,” Kyungsoo says grimly. “We’re trying to stop him. But he has sent others to kill you, they’re probably on their way now.” 

Youngjin peers up at him suspiciously, staring between him and Jongin like he can somehow see through them to find the truth. 

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t do much to help,” he says, seeming to accept that they’re not here to kill him, at least not yet. “I’m dying, boy. Radiation poisoning or something fancy like that.” 

He dissolves into a fit of coughing and Jongin rushes over to his side to help him sit up a little straighter, holding up a glass of water to his lips. 

“You can help us,” Jongin says quietly after Youngjin’s breathing settles again. “You could tell us everything you know, anything that will help us incriminate them. We just need proof.” 

Youngjin looks up at him doubtfully. “He’s a smart guy, Chuwon. Good at covering his tracks. I’ve never even seen the guy, let alone know who gives him orders.” 

“Anything you can tell us will help,” Jongin urges him. 

Youngjin heaves out a raspy sigh, and Kyungsoo holds his breath, waiting for his answer. 

“Can’t hurt, I suppose,” he says and Kyungsoo exhales in relief. “Might as well do something right so this wasn’t all just a waste.”

Kyungsoo jerks into motion, taking his phone out and pulling up the voice recorder, setting it down on the nightstand close to Youngjin. He nods, letting him know that he can start talking. 

“My name is Cha Youngjin. I’ve been working in the old factory outside the city.”

Jongin nods in encouragement and he goes on, detailing everything about the nuclear operations loud and clear, his words broken only by more bouts of coughing. 

“They told us the government sanctioned it but I’m not stupid,” Youngjin goes on, scoffing. “No way any of this is legal. I served my time in the army, I remember the Soviet crests. Guess we’ve come full circle, selling nuclear arms to the Russians now.” 

He stops to take a breath and Kyungsoo glances out through the window anxiously, keeping an eye out for any more visitors. He closes the curtain to make sure no one can look, or shoot, inside. 

“They’re smart, you know,” Youngjin goes on. “Making us sign NDAs to keep us quiet. It’s not like we have any other options out here; we need to survive somehow. Can’t afford to break contract and get evicted and sued on top of that. No one else was hiring and I needed the money.”

He coughs again, the sound is painful, coming from deep in his chest.

“I don’t have much time left, so it doesn’t matter anyway. If I go down, I’m damn well going to drag them down with me.” 

“I don’t know who the big boss is. We only ever answered to some guy called Chuwon and I only know that because I overheard a phone call,” Youngjin’s breathing is starting to get wheezy, struggling to get through the words. Jongin steps in closer to Kyungsoo, and Kyungsoo feels him slip his finger around one of his own, squeezing for comfort. 

“What I do know is when their next shipment is going out. The 21st of this month, down by the docks; they stick to a pattern, bi-weekly. Not sure how helpful this is but they mentioned something about a ‘Rindigo’. Heard them say it while I was loading the trucks.”

He stops, done talking, and Kyungsoo ends the recording, saving the file safely. He gives Youngjin a grateful nod, pocketing his phone securely. This is more than enough to help nail them. 

“S’pose I’m done here, then” Youngjin whispers weakly, starting to drift off. His eyes fall shut, leaning back into his pillow and he exhales one more time before going completely still, just like that.

Kyungsoo swallows, taking the rest of Jongin’s hand into his own and squeezes it tighter. They stand there a few more seconds before leaving, aware that someone is still on their way there.

It’s a quiet ride home, and they’re both lost for words when they get back inside the apartment. Jongin immediately heads into the bathroom and Kyungsoo hears the shower running. 

He settles back on his laptop again, staring at all the old documents and wondering where ‘Rindigo’ comes in. He tries cross referencing the word with locations and coordinates but he comes up empty. Trying to unscramble the letters into different words doesn’t work either. 

Jongin emerges from the bathroom, wiping the back of his neck with a towel, sweeping his wet bangs out of his face, looking much fresher now. He settles down beside him and Kyungsoo smells the ginger scent of his shampoo. 

“Anything?”

Kyungsoo shakes his head, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “Can’t find any links to this ‘Rindigo’ word.” 

Jongin sighs through his nose, leaning down to slump on Kyungsoo’s shoulder and Kyungsoo forgets about the word for a moment, distracted by the proximity and Jongin’s warmth against his side. 

“Honestly, it just sounds like some weird nickname.”

Against his better judgement, Kyungsoo nearly leans down to press his lips into Jongin’s hair until his words suddenly ring clear in his ears. 

“Wait, what?” 

Jongin straightens up, blinking at him. 

“The word,” he says, jutting his chin out at the screen where the word is displayed. “I just thought it sounded like a nickname for something.” 

“Holy shit,” Kyungsoo gasps, kicking himself for not seeing how obvious it is. He pulls up Seungsoo’s reports on the fund transfers and tracks it through the timeline Youngjin mentioned, cross-referencing it against the word ‘Rindigo’ in the database. The result shows up on the screen in seconds. 

“It’s a shell company,” Kyungsoo gapes in disbelief, digging deeper to unravel the rest of the thread. “That’s where the funds are being laundered through.”

“Who owns it?” Jongin asks and Kyungsoo is already on it, trying to find who it’s signed to. The name shows up at the bottom of the page a number of clicks later. 

Yun Sangjun.

Jongin’s jaw drops, gaping at the screen. “Holy fuck. Isn’t that-”

“The Minister of International Trade,” Kyungsoo ends breathlessly, stunned by how deep within the government this goes. He’s seen this guy all over the news, meeting with important foreign officials and signing deals with other countries and nations. He’s credited with bring a new, high level of modernity and development for their country, praised for all his work overseas. There’s a whole line of dirty government officials and employees connected to this, including probably at least half the board in the general hospital. After all, he’s the one who funded the development of the hospital in the first place. 

Jongin looks at him wordlessly with hope in his eyes, an edge of triumphance in his smile and Kyungsoo beams back at him. They’ve finally got it.

▸

They can’t go to the police to turn in the evidence themselves, too much of it pointing back at them and it will expose them too much if they just walked in and submitted all this at once. They’re both still being hunted down after all, that much hasn’t changed.

Kyungsoo stares down at an old pager in his hands, twirling it between his fingers pensively. 

“I have an old friend in the force,” Kyungsoo says quietly, staring down at the device he never used. He hasn’t seen or spoken to Jongdae since he quit all those months ago. “We can trust him with the evidence.” 

Jongdae was there for him the whole way to comfort him when Seungsoo died. He’d done his hardest to fight for Seungsoo’s case with Kyungsoo, and was furious on his behalf when they were told to stand down. Jongdae had given him the pager the day he quit, telling him to press the button if he ever needed him and he’d be there. Kyungsoo’s thought about it ever since then, doubting himself and wondering if he should press it and ask Jongdae to help him get out of this life he’s been living these past few months, to help end it, but always deciding not to, choosing to push on with what he’s doing. 

He freezes the accounts linked to the shell for the time being, locking them so that they can’t be accessed and nothing can be moved in or out anymore. He’s arranged for a meeting with Jongdae later that day under the bridge by the river, a quiet place with no people to eavesdrop. 

Jongin seems to sense that he’s nervous, reaching over to rub the small of his back while they wait for Jongdae to show up. Kyungsoo appreciates the gesture, offering him a grateful smile. It’s been a long time since Kyungsoo cut off all contact; he has no idea how Jongdae is going to react to seeing him.

There isn’t more time to worry about that when Jongdae rounds the corner, showing up at the mouth of the bridge. He freezes for a moment, spotting him standing next to Jongin before he comes marching right at them. 

Kyungsoo braces himself for a blow in jaw when Jongdae swings his arms up, but he only pulls Kyungsoo into a tight embrace, leaning his entire weight on him. 

“God, it’s really good to see you,” Jongdae mumbles into his shoulder, clinging to him impossibly tighter. He pulls back eventually, holding Kyungsoo away by the shoulder, studying his face. “How’ve you been?”

Kyungsoo breathes out a laugh of relief, giddy at Jongdae’s reception, like the old friend he’d always had. 

“Jongdae, I did it,” he says, cutting right to the chase. He holds out the fat file of Seungsoo’s documents and a thumb drive with Youngjin’s recording. “Seungsoo’s case.”

Jongdae confusion turns to shock, his eyes widening as he stares down at the reports in his hands. 

“You- how-,” Jongdae starts but then he registers Jongin hanging back behind Kyungsoo, trying not to intrude on the moment. “Who’s this?”

Jongin introduces himself, inclining his head politely and Kyungsoo steps back to stand level with him by his side. 

“He’s a doctor at the hospital, he’s the reason I got a lead on the case,” Kyungsoo says quickly, sparing him the rest of the details. “Look, just read the file, it’s all in there.”

“Okay, okay,” Jongdae waves him off, sifting through the papers and skimming over the words. His face has always been an open book, his expression shifting after every paper with surprise followed by increasing shock. 

“Holy shit,” he says, after getting through the medical records and finally getting to the transaction records. “ _Holy shit_.”

He gawks up at Kyungsoo when he’s finally done, mirroring the exact same reaction they’d both had when they dug it up in the first place. 

“Where did you even find all this?” he asks, though he’s not really expecting an answer, knowing how resourceful Kyungsoo is. “What about this?”

He holds up the thumb drive. 

“A verbal confession. From one of the workers,” Kyungsoo says. “Look, Jongdae, I need you to submit these as an anonymous tip.”

“What? Why?” Jongdae stares at him, confused. “We could use your statement. Jongin could help us with the medical reports.”

Kyungsoo shakes his head. “It’s complicated. Look it’s just- it’s not safe yet. Not until this is over. There’s another shipment going out on the 21st, you need to be there.” 

Jongdae eyes him, perplexed, but he doesn’t push even though he doesn’t understand what’s going on. He concedes with a nod. 

“Alright,” he sighs, looking down at the file again. “I’ll make sure everyone’s on this and get a team ready to bust that shipment.”

“Thank you,” Kyungsoo says sincerely, squeezing Jongdae’s elbow. 

“Lay low, okay” Jongdae says, turning to walk back up the hill. “I’ll take care of it.” 

He disappears with a wave and Kyungsoo watches him go, left with an overwhelming bubble of relief in his chest. Jongin steps up close beside him, shyly reaching down to press his thumb into Kyungsoo’s palm. Kyungsoo turns to him with a smile, closing his fist to trap Jongin’s thumb and leads him back to his bike to go home. 

 

It’s been a long time since he’s been able to spend a moment without needing to be bent over his laptop, studying reports and diagrams. Kyungsoo forgoes the couch this time, sitting on the carpet with his back against the couch cushions instead and Jongin joins him, sitting cross-legged. 

Kyungsoo rolls his shoulders, groaning at the stiff pain in his muscles. 

“Hadn’t realized how sore everything was,” he chuckles at Jongin, digging his fingers into the muscles by his shoulders. 

Jongin pats him sympathetically. “Here, turn around.”

Kyungsoo shifts to turn his back to Jongin obediently, accidentally groaning a little too loudly when Jongin presses his fingers into a knot on his shoulder. 

Laughing apologetically, Jongin’s touch turns more gentle, working his fingers down Kyungsoo’s spine, spreading out under his shoulder blades before coming up again to work on the tense muscles close to his neck. 

“I was going into physio before I realized I liked surgery more,” Jongin says and Kyungsoo struggles to pay attention under his magical fingers, trying really hard not to start moaning embarrassingly. 

“You’re amazing,” Kyungsoo sighs, squeezing his eyes shut. Jongin chuckles, trailing his fingers down the sides of his shoulders to work on his biceps. He can feel his whole body relaxing, putty in his Jongin’s hands. 

Kyungsoo’s eyes fly open when he feels a soft warmth pressing into the back of his neck, right at the top of his spine. He turns slowly when Jongin’s hands fall away, facing him and holding his gaze when he catches his eye, seeing the look on his face. His eyes are heated and longing, and Kyungsoo can’t help looking down at Jongin’s lips before glancing up again. 

Kyungsoo can’t think straight anymore when Jongin looks at him like that, hooking his hand around the back of Jongin’s neck and tugs him in to kiss him. It feels like he’s finally breathing, feeling the bubble swelling behind his ribs and melts in the heat of Jongin’s mouth, and the softness of his lips against his own. 

Jongin moves in closer on his knees, pressing their chests up together and tilts Kyungsoo’s chin up to kiss him deeper, parting his lips, tasting him. 

He loses his balance when Jongin leans closer, tumbling backwards on the floor and Jongin falls with him, bracing himself with an elbow before he squashes Kyungsoo. He laughs brightly and Kyungsoo leans up to kiss his smile, thoroughly and helplessly endeared by him. Jongin presses him into the floor, tilting his head to lick into his mouth with a low moan. He pulls away from Kyungsoo’s lips to kiss a path down his neck, mouthing at his throat, and Kyungsoo moans softly, burying his fingers in Jongin’s hair to keep him close. 

Jongin tugs at the collar of Kyungsoo’s shirt, trying to kiss down his chest and Kyungsoo rolls him over with an ankle hooked around the bend of his knees, straddling him instead. He yanks his shirt off over his head, sighing when Jongin’s fingers slide up his stomach, pressing into his skin. He helps Jongin out of his own quickly, stripping out of the rest of their clothes till there’s nothing left between them, buried in each other.

▸

_‘Check the news!’_

Kyungsoo opens Jongdae’s text anxiously, having been waiting to hear from him all day, checking his phone a million times. Today was when the bust was supposed to go down and Kyungsoo is desperate to know how it went. Jongin grabs the remote to switch the channel over to the news, sitting on the edge of his seat anxiously. 

“ _discovered nuclear arms being illegally manufactured and sold overseas to Russian contacts_ -”

They watch as the camera pans away from the anchorwoman in the studio and switching to a scene outside a large house as a man is frogmarched out by the police with his hands behind his back.

“ _Evidence has brought to light Minister Yun Sangjun’s involvement in the dealings and is to be tried in court. Further investigations are being carried out into the rest of the people involved._ ”

Kyungsoo watches the scene shift to the hospital Jongin worked at, watching as a number of doctors are seized for being linked to connections with the illegal organization. Jongin’s face lightens up in relief at that, even though he’s still wringing his hands together. 

“Hey,” Kyungsoo murmurs, reaching over to set a hand over Jongin’s. “It’s over.” 

It only sinks in for him the moment he says it, feeling the overwhelming relief washing over him till his head is spinning, almost in disbelief that it’s _finally_ over. After all these months, he can finally just _stop_ and put his mind at ease. He thinks about Seungsoo, feeling the familiar ache that will probably never leave but it’s filled with something else too; this is probably what real justice feels like. 

Jongin beams at him, leaning over to kiss him on the corner of his mouth, looking radiant. 

“So, do you have any champagne here?” Jongin asks, his eyes scrunching up happily. 

“No, but I have wine up in the storage room I think,” Kyungsoo laughs, dropping a kiss on his nose before tearing himself away to go look for the bottles. He takes the stairs up to the storage room, rifling through the shelves to find the alcohol and looks between the choices, deciding to just grab a bottle of each. 

“Hey, which do you want, red or white?” Kyungsoo calls down, reading the labels on each bottle, though he doesn’t even know that much about wine. 

There’s no answer and Kyungsoo frowns, coming back down the stairs. Jongin isn’t in the living room and Kyungsoo blinks, stepping in further. 

“Jongin?” he rounds the corner into the kitchen and his heart stops, dropping sharply. 

Jongin is standing there by the sink, frozen and poker upright as Chuwon stands behind him, pressing the nozzle of his gun to Jongin’s head. He keeps himself hidden behind Jongin even though Kyungsoo doesn’t dare make another move.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding,” he sneers, Jongin is pale, biting down on his lower lip and keeping his hands fisted by his sides. 

Kyungsoo swallows, feeling like his chest is being crushed, struggling to find his voice when Chuwon presses the gun harder into Jongin’s temple. 

“What do you want?” he says hoarsely, staring between Jongin and Chuwon. 

“Unfreeze the money,” he hisses. “I know you’re the one who did it. Unfreeze it and transfer it to my account or I’ll blow his brains out.” 

He grips Jongin’s shoulder and Jongin stiffens, swallowing but not making a sound

“Okay just- okay,” Kyungsoo says, setting the bottles down and raising his palms slowly, turning to the laptop on the table. He catches sight of the beeper sitting beside it and his stomach swoops, trying not to let anything show on his face. “Just- easy.” 

He boots up the laptop, pretending to fiddle with the wire connecting it and manages to press the button on the pager twice. His heart nearly stops, wondering if Chuwon saw him do it, that it might provoke him into hurting Jongin, but he doesn’t appear to have seen him. 

“Turn the laptop to me,” Chuwon orders him. “I want to see you do it.” 

Kyungsoo obliges, obediently turning the laptop and waiting till the screen lights up before pulling up the accounts. 

“What a waste,” Chuwon mutters. “It’s pathetic. You’ve been parading yourself around like some sort of avenger with a complex moral compass yet you go around changing your principles just like that. Should’ve just let things be in the first place and not started digging too close for your own good.”

“You used me,” Kyungsoo snaps back angrily. “You used your bullshit lies to manipulate me into your ideology when you saw the chance. The operation’s over. All the deals you and your boss were making are finished.”

“Spare me the speech,” Chuwon grunts, waving the gun at Kyungsoo threateningly before bringing it back to Jongin’s head. “Hurry the fuck up with that.”

“I have to hack into it now that it’s under police surveillance, it’ll take some time” Kyungsoo says, trying to force himself to stay calm and buy time, praying that Jongdae responds to his call. 

“I don’t give a shit, pick up the pace or I shoot,” Chuwon growls. “And you.”

He turns his focus to Jongin, jabbing the nozzle of the gun into his head a little harder for emphasis. 

“You should have been dead a long time ago,” he says. “Kyungsoo here used to be such a good lapdog for us; he must have gone soft for you.” 

Jongin grits his teeth but still says nothing. Chuwon yanks his head back by the fistful of his hair and Jongin winces at the sharp movement. 

“Maybe I should just shoot you myself now,” Chuwon muses. “I don’t actually really need you, I just need him.”

He looks straight at Kyungsoo as he says it, cocking the gun again. “A gun to his head would be just as effective.”

Kyungsoo feels a bubble of panic rising in his chest, feeling like he’s being ripped out inside when he sees Chuwon tighten his finger around the trigger. 

“You’ll need a lot more than a gun to get me to do your bidding if you kill him,” he says in a rush, desperately praying that he doesn’t shoot. His entire stomach is in his throat, aching painfully with fear. 

“How romantic,” Chuwon sneers, mocking him. 

“What was it like?” he goes on in Jongin’s ear. “Find out all of Kyungsoo’s secrets and everything he’s done. After all, he’s just like me.”

“He’s nothing like you,” Jongin snaps finally, and Chuwon smirks derisively.

“You’re naive,” he says. “That’s precious. You won’t last long.”

He turns to Kyungsoo and snaps at him to get on with it, pressing his finger dangerously close to the trigger again. Kyungsoo’s about to turn back but he catches Jongin’s eye, giving him a determined look and half a smile. He doesn't have time to say anything before Jongin suddenly moves sharply, pulling one of the moves Kyungsoo had taught him. He ducks and shoots his elbow backwards, effectively knocking Chuwon off balance and dropping his gun. Jongin scrambles to get away from him, leaping out of reach and dashing to Kyungsoo’s side. 

Chuwon straightens up again quickly, livid as he raises his gun in the air again, aimed right at them. Kyungsoo does the only thing he can think of, diving in front of Jongin just as a loud shot fires, cracking through the air. 

The white hot pain of the bullet doesn’t come. Kyungsoo lowers his arms in time to see Chuwon crumpling to the ground, in a pool of shattered glass from the kitchen window. His blood paints the floor underneath him and Kyungsoo sees the headshot on the side of his skull before registering the red dot of a sniper’s gun flashing on the wall. 

Jongin collapses in a chair weakly, breathing heavily and Kyungsoo ducks down warily to check Chuwon’s pulse. He’s gone. Kyungsoo peers out the window and breathes a sigh of relief, seeing Jongdae and a swat team outside, a strategic distance away, having made it just in time. 

Jongdae is the first to come running, bursting through the door and marching right up to him to make sure he’s okay. 

“I’m fine,” Kyungsoo reassures him when Jongdae calls for a medic to check him out. “Thanks for coming.”

Jongdae sighs, setting a heavy hand on Kyungsoo’s shoulder. 

“There’s still some of us here that you can trust,” he says, patting him before slipping off to deal with the body. 

Kyungsoo turns back to Jongin, dropping down into the seat beside him, feeling weak with relief himself. Jongin reaches out for his hand, squeezing it tightly. Kyungsoo brings it up to his mouth, pressing his lips to Jongin’s knuckles, glad to see him smile a little again. 

“I think I’ve had my fair share of guns pointed at me to last a lifetime,” Jongin remarks weakly, breathing out a small laugh. He’ll be okay. His eyes follow the forensics as they cover Chuwon’s body with a sheet, but his expression remains smooth, relaxing when Kyungsoo sets a steady hand on his knee.

▸

They have to go down to the station with Jongdae to give their official statements for the record, and they leave with an apology from the force directed at Jongin. As far as they’re aware, Jongin’s name was somehow leaked when the medical reports were submitted in contribution to the case and Chuwon sought him out to get revenge. There’s nothing about Kyungsoo’s involvement in the matter.

They go home in a car that Jongdae lets Kyungsoo borrow to take them both home and they sit there parked in front of the house for a bit. 

“What you said earlier-” Kyungsoo starts hesitantly, recalling Jongin’s words to Chuwon. 

“I meant it,” Jongin says promptly, looking at him with certainty in his eyes. “You’re nothing like him.”

Kyungsoo stares at him wordlessly and Jongin goes on.

“I may not always agree with your reasoning, but I do understand it. You’re not a bad person,” he says with a tone that makes Kyungsoo believe it.

He feels something swell in his chest, feeling like the lingering sense of shame and guilt that’s been growing inside him is finally subsiding. He still doesn’t regret it and Jongin is well aware or that, but they’ve definitely gotten to a point of understanding together; a compromise. 

He leans over to kiss Jongin, pulling him in by the back of his neck and Jongin reciprocates eagerly. Kyungsoo clambers over the gearshift, crawling somewhat clumsily into Jongin’s lap to kiss him harder, feeling Jongin’s hands sliding up his back, over his shoulder blades.

Jongin tries to fiddle with the lever of the car seat to drop it back but he hisses suddenly, pulling his hand out to find a long cut across his palm from a piece of metal sticking out.

“You know, I’m probably qualified enough to fix that up now,” Kyungsoo hums. Jongin rolls his eyes and leans forward to kiss him again.

▸

“Hi hyung.”

Kyungsoo sets the flowers down on Seungsoo’s headstone, cleaning away the old, dried up bouquet he’d brought last time. He feels the familiar ache in his chest just looking at his name etched into the stone, wondering if he’ll ever be able get to a point where he’ll be okay with this. 

“I miss you.”

He’s not angry anymore. The burning rage that had been spurring him on the last few months has been tamped down almost completely and it feels liberating. 

“I did it,” he says quietly. “I finished what you were trying to do. I got the people who did this to you.” 

He turns back to see Jongin waiting for him a short distance away, respectfully giving him his privacy. 

“I’ll be okay now, don’t worry,” he murmurs, feeling a sense of peace settling over him; something he hasn’t felt in a long time. “I’m happy.”


End file.
